Song of the male harbour seal

Svante, the male harbour seal st Fjord&Bælt, is able of producing many different types of sound which you may hear during the public presentations of the animals at the center. He is roaring, growling, slapping the water surface and producing bubbles underwater. These sounds travel far underwater and can be heard at considerable distances.

Svantes sounds are actually very similar to the sounds heard by wild male harbour seals. During summertime the male seals make many different sounds, probably to attract females and chase off other males. Thus, these sounds are parts of a song which the males use during courtship.

There are many investigations of this seal song across most of the distribution of harbour seals in the world. However we have no recordings of the song from Denmark. From other areas we know that the song sounds differently in different regions. You may say that different seals sing with different dialects. Which dialect the Danish seals are using is one of the questions that Puk Sabinsky tries to answer with her Master of Science project at Fjord&Bælt and the University of Southern Denmark. She is recording seals in many parts of Denmark and compares them with results from Sweden, Norway and Scotland.

 

Here is a recording of a harbour seal singing around the Koster Islands on the Swedish westcoast. The sounds were recorded by Magnus Wahlberg, Fjord&Bælt.